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Still, every song he sings, he’s food for the falcon.

Every night she waits, she’s food for death.

“GAVILÁN O PALOMA”

—Mexico City

Once a bird pecked her lover’s hand

with such sincerity that she lost

hold of the seeds she secretly tossed,

to keep all the birds at her command.

No dejabas de mirar, you sang me,

last night, estabas sola completamente

bella y sensual, and the notes stirred

loose feather dust from your chest.

you didn’t stop staring

you alone were completely

beautiful and sensual

When you exhaled, your silhouette

dissolved, reddening the D. F. dusk.

Vibrato frayed your veil: how you fled

one city, but betrayal beckoned you;

confess, how lovers nest in branches

of your collarbones while you sleep.

Entre tus brazos caí…consumed

by your song’s, lonesome downbeat.

How I fell into your arms

Paloma,

I know some days begin with birds.

Nights we suffer from too few songs.

How the chorus of a woman’s lips delays

Sorrows that each heartbeat prolongs.

Amiga,

Tell me how you’re leaning, before

sunlight bathes the city in pink spells.

Will your voice deliver me morning?

Or, will the caroling street-vendors bells?

USES FOR SPANISH IN PITTSBURGH

What use is there for describing

Bloomfield’s hard-sloping rooftops this way?

Or that the church steeples beam upward, inexpertly

toward God. What difference does it make

to say, the chimney pipes peel their red skins,

or las pieles rojas, exposing tough steel underneath.

What good, then, for Spanish,

its parity of consonants and vowels—

vowels like a window to the throat,

breath chiming through the vocal chords.

And what good is singing to describe

this barrio’s version of the shortened sky,

el cielo cortado—power lines crisscrossing

so high, that blue only teases through them.

And what for fog la niebla arrastra,

creeping down las calles inmóviles

before the bank and grocery store open.

Y por la zapatería on Liberty Avenue,

a lady’s antique boot for a street sign.

And by the shoemaker’s

What use to remember in any language

my father was a Puerto Rican shoe salesman.

From his mouth dangled a ropy, ashy cigarette.

He spoke good English and knew when to smile.

fishing nets

With his strong fingers he’d knot shoes like redes,

knew three kinds of knots so lady customers

could buy the shoes they loved to look at

but really shouldn’t have worn.

At home, Dad kept his lengua íntima

to himself. His Spanish not for children,

only older relatives who forced him to speak,

reminded, Spanish means there’s another person

inside you. All beauty, he’d argue, no power in it.

Still, I remember, he spoke a hushed Spanish

to customers who struggled in English, the ones

he pitied for having no language to live on.

So many years gone, what use to invent

or question him in Pittsburgh? The educated one,

why would I want my clumsy Spanish to stray

from the pages of books outward? My tongue,

he’d think so untrue and inarticulate. Each word

having no past in it. What then? Speaking Spanish

to make them better times or Pittsburgh

a better place. En vez de regresar la dura realidad

del pasado. And then, if I choose to speak like this

who will listen?

Instead of returning

to the hard reality

of the past

ODE TO GLASS

After its lip

the bottle flares out

like the A-line of

a girl’s skirt

when she twirls

at recess.

On the descent

the company’s crest—

one red and one blue

crescent about to

clasp together

into a globe

but between

them, the name

of the soda sits

in bold, white letters.

Below

the slogan

the tiny print:

contenido neto 355 ml,

and hecho en México,

in perfectly

executed paint.

Partway down

the bottle corners

into a barrel-shape,

the swiveled glass,

the same as stripes

of a barber’s pole, forces

the eye to follow

and twist along its

blurred contours,

the way skin blurs

the contours of

an arm so you

slow down into

the elbow’s nook.

And how much

like skin the peach

and brown and